A string quartet, trumpets, singers and dancers provided the backdrop to Thursday's groundbreaking for the $383 million Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando.

"Tonight, we are going to celebrate our community, the people that are in our community and what we've been able to get done together," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said, taking a silver shovel to join a row of children and project supporters to break ground on the building.

The event featured performances by Broadway star (and former Orlando resident) Davis Gaines, members of the Orlando Philharmonic, the cast of the Broadway touring production of "Hair," the Orlando Ballet and other local arts groups. After the performances, Dyer spoke of his high-school interest in drama and his hope that the new center would inspire future generations.

"Arts and culture are really the soul of our city," Dyer told a crowd estimated at more than 600 people in an air-conditioned tent at the project site.

The road to this day has been a long one, characterized by debate, delays and disappointments. First broached in the 1980s by then-Mayor Bill Frederick, the resulting project more than two decades later will not initially include a home for the Philharmonic and the ballet.

But unity was the theme at an event that Central Florida political leaders and cultural supporters agreed will be remembered as historic.

The first phase of the downtown performing-arts center will feature a 2,700-seat amplified auditorium designed for touring Broadway shows and a 300-seat theater. It's scheduled for completion by 2014.

"We believe this is a major milestone moment, an important day that in years ahead we'll look back on as a turning point in momentum for the Orlando cultural community," said David Schillhammer, executive director of the Orlando Philharmonic. "Without a phase one, there would be no phase two, so we're excited that the project is moving forward — and we look forward to the day when the funding is in place for phase two."

A new performing-arts center will help transform Orlando into a "world-class city," said Sibille Hart Pritchard, president of the Orlando Ballet and board member on the arts center's executive committee. "You have to start somewhere. After this is built, people will forget how it started. Then everybody can appreciate what we have."

Getting started

Three Orlando mayors — Frederick, Glenda Hood and Dyer — have championed a new performing-arts center. But it didn't get traction until 2005, when Dyer forged a political alliance with Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty, who pledged Orange tourist-tax revenues to help build a new arts center.

"It's simple math to understand: Without the resort tax, you can't do it," Frederick said Thursday. "That was one of the real milestones for this project."

The 2008 recession sent the county's tourist-tax revenues tumbling and stymied an impressive early private-fundraising drive for the arts center.

Facing funding shortfalls, arts supporters this year turned to Crotty's successor, Mayor Teresa Jacobs, for additional funding help or loan guarantees. Jacobs refused and publicly criticized how the arts-center project had been managed so far.

Private donors finally pledged to fill the gap.

"You know the thing," Frederick said. "Soldier on."

Margot Knight, president of United Arts of Central Florida, praised the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts board for keeping the project alive in tough economic times.

"Performing-arts spaces are critical to our vibrancy as a city," she said. "Whether in Sanford, Winter Garden or downtown Orlando, artists and the organizations that employ and showcase them need space."

Is she optimistic about completion of the project's yet-unscheduled and unfunded second phase, to include a theater suited to classical music and dance?

"I cannot look into my crystal ball," said Knight, who knows that the fundraising effort will be challenging. "We know how tough it is."

Built-in potential

Even in a tough economy, a new performing-arts center can be an economic boon to a community, said Bob Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, a Washington-based national advocacy group for the arts.

Nationally, the nonprofit arts industry generates $166.2 billion annually in the United States and accounts for 5.7 million jobs. Local patrons of theater and arts productions spend an average of $19.53 per event, in addition to ticket purchases, while out-of-county patrons average $40, according to research by Americans for the Arts.

With Orlando's tourism industry, there's built-in potential for out-of-town visitors to a new center, but success isn't automatic, Lynch says.